


for him

by iwritetrash



Series: be all my sins remembered [5]
Category: Victoria (TV)
Genre: Break Up, Florence actually becomes a character, Heartbreak, Infidelity, M/M, Poor Florence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-28
Updated: 2018-02-28
Packaged: 2019-03-25 07:19:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 730
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13829235
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iwritetrash/pseuds/iwritetrash
Summary: it is time for florence to make a choice





	for him

**Author's Note:**

> so i'm back to add to this series... i've already written the next couple of parts but honestly i'm not sure how i feel about them. i'm not even sure how i feel about this part but it's pretty much the only way i can see this going down so... there's probably only two more parts after this, maybe a third if i feel up to it, but we'll see!
> 
> i hope you like this!

Florence is not blind, and she’s not stupid. She knows Edward has been having an affair, and sure, it breaks her heart to know she isn’t enough for him, but at least he’s happy, right? That’s what she tells herself when she pretends not to notice him sneaking into their bed late at night, smelling like sex while he lies to her face.

Any other woman would divorce him. But Florence feels some strange sense of duty to Edward, somehow, because they’ve known each other _forever_ , and perhaps she’s always known that he was gay, but she’d gone along with it because she loved him and she loved the idea that maybe he might want her. She should have known it would end like this.

They’ve barely slept together since they got married, and Florence is better acquainted with her vibrator than with her own husband, but she still can’t find it in her to leave him. Good politicians have nice wives who smile for the photographs and act like everything is perfect. If she left him… she would ruin that for him. And she couldn’t do that.

It’s not until Edward stops coming home late and starts drinking more that she starts to wonder whether maybe it was about more than sex, and whether whatever affair he was having might have ended. She wonders if he did it, or his lover.

When Alfred stops visiting as well Florence puts two and two together.

Had Edward always loved him, she wonders, remembering their wedding, when Alfred had been their best man, or had Edward at least believed himself to have loved her once? 

Perhaps she will never know the answer.

But such thoughts are inconsequential. Maybe, now that Edward is no longer having an affair, they stand a chance of building a real marriage. She can’t help, of course, but harbour some hope that maybe he could love her too, even with the small voice in the back of her mind that whispers that she knows that isn’t possible.

Still, she does her best to try and draw him into a life of domestic bliss, and she even floats the idea of having children one day. Her attempts fall on deaf ears. 

At least when Edward was sleeping with Alfred he was more attentive, kinder, as though he was compensating for a guilty conscience. Instead, she finds him closed off, and drinking as though it might wash away the pain. She hates seeing him like this.

Somewhere around the six-month mark Florence snaps. She can’t stand to see him hurting like this, and she’s sick of this shell of a marriage, so she tells him it’s time to put an end to this mess.

She tells him she knows about Alfred, and she knows about the affair, and she knows he doesn’t love her, and she wants a fucking divorce. Edward stares at her with something akin to shock written on his face, twisted with an element of fear. Florence realises he is afraid she is going to tell the world.

So she tells him she won’t, and she sits down on the sofa next to Edward and tells him he’s being stupid, moping around like this instead of going after the man he loves. And she smiles and brushes it off when he apologises for not giving her what she deserved, because this is about _Edward_ , and she’s not going to let him be unhappy if there’s anything she can do to stop it.

Florence smiles and swallows her tears and tells him no career is worth losing someone you love, and they can sign the divorce papers tomorrow because she’s already put them in order according to their prenup (at the time, she hadn’t wanted to sign a prenup, but now she finds she is really quite grateful that the arrangements are, for the most part, in place, eliminating the need for lengthy divorce settlement talks), and then it’s up to him what he does about Alfred.

She doesn’t cry until she’s excused herself to the bathroom, because a small part of her had still been holding out hope that she was wrong, that he loved her, that the affair had been a mistake, that the affair had been a fantasy, that he would fight for her. But he didn’t.

At least Edward will be happy, she thinks.

**Author's Note:**

> let me know what you thought! this isn't my best work, but i really wanted to add to this series.
> 
> thank you so much for reading and for all your lovely feedback <3


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